A radome minimizes losses and improves radiation characteristics of an antenna through its design. Shown is the surface current density on the patch antenna, the magnitude of the electric potential on the antenna's substrate, and the electric field in the radome's shell. The plot at the bottom left shows the far-field radiation pattern.

New suite of high-frequency electromagnetic simulation tutorials demonstrate how to apply COMSOL Multiphysics for antenna design and plasmonic technologies. Also shows how to analyze wireless devices and optical systems in a tightly integrated cross-disciplinary software.

BURLINGTON, MA (March 8, 2012) — COMSOL, Inc., today announces the release of a new edition of its RF Module tutorials for its flagship product, COMSOL Multiphysics. The tutorial package has been enhanced with 20 new models that demonstrate how to leverage the RF extension module when designing and analyzing antennas and plasmonic technologies.

Additionally, the new tutorial package comes with a suite of benchmarking tools, enabling users to assess the accuracy of their engineering simulations developed with the RF Module against established reference points. With the 20 new models, the tutorial library for RF Module now provides more than 50 example models, all of which are available for immediate download at www.comsol.com/showroom/product/rf/.

“It is great to provide our growing base of RF Module users with a brand new tutorial package,” says Walter Frei, PhD applications manager at COMSOL. “More and more engineers and scientists have made COMSOL Multiphysics their simulation platform for researching and developing emerging technologies such as metamaterial and plasmonics modeling. One reason users cite for the popularity of COMSOL Multiphysics in these applications is the flexibility of the user interface, which allows for anisotropic materials, negative permittivity and permeability. They also cite the software's general and highly automated solver technologies. We're delighted to show our user community how they can better apply the RF Module to RF and Microwave simulations.”

Among the new tutorials now available are microstrip patch antenna, double-layered dielectric lens radome, branch line coupler, evanescent-mode cavity filter, and dielectric resonator antenna. “These examples should really help users get kick-started with COMSOL Multiphysics and the RF Module,” says Jiyoun Munn, microwave applications expert at COMSOL. “They show you step-by-step how to quickly create the geometry and set up material properties, ports, and other boundary conditions. There's even an emphasis on production of relevant S-parameter and far-field radiation pattern outputs, which are vital for making informed design decisions.”

An evanescent-mode cavity filter is resonant at a frequency lower than its original fundamental-mode frequency that can be brought about by creating a discontinuity inside the cavity. The electric field and S-parameter analysis in this example show that this discontinuity – the dielectric tube inside the cavity -- does not significantly distort the signal.

“The tutorials also show off COMSOL’s amazing visualization capabilities,” adds Mr. Munn. “COMSOL lets you visualize any type of field quantity anywhere in your model easily. This capability helps users build confidence in their analyses while developing an intuitive feel for their models quickly.”

Benchmarks

A number of classic benchmarks are a standard part of the new RF Module tutorial package. The benchmarks come with step-by-step instructions that make it easy for users set-up their evaluations. Among the areas of interest addressed by new example benchmarks are transmission line theory, Mie scattering, and photonics.

Additionally, the COMSOL user community continuously provides even more benchmarks and experimental verifications for the RF Module. Many of these user submissions have been presented at the annual COMSOL Conference, making them available free of charge on the COMSOL Conference CD. The conference CD can be ordered online at http://www.comsol.com/conference/cd/.

Multiphysics and Microwave Simulations

Earlier editions of the RF Module tutorial package came with a number of multiphysics and microwave simulation examples such as microwave heating of food and the mechanical deformation of microstrip filters. In fact, COMSOL has been developing multiphysics technology for electromagnetic wave simulations for more than 15 years.

“Users rely on us to provide the most versatile and integrated solution on the market for these strongly coupled physics phenomena,” says Magnus Olsson, PhD, product manager for electromagnetics with COMSOL. “We bring together microwave, heat, flow, and mechanical simulations.”

“One of the most significant multiphysics capabilities we provide microwave engineers is the ability to combine frequency-domain and time-domain simulations, such as the turning on-and-off of a microwave source, and solve for the transient heating with temperature-dependent material properties simultaneously,” Dr. Olsson adds.

Microstrip filters can be fabricated directly on a printed circuit board with a microstrip line going from the input to the output. Along the microstrip line there are a number of stubs of certain lengths and widths. The design of the filter involves choosing the impedance of the microstrip line, the impedance of the stub microstrips, and the length of the stubs. The filter above has a seventh-pole low-pass Chebyshev response. The entire layout with dielectric layer was imported from an ODB++(X) file using the COMSOL RF Module's ECAD Import feature. Since the filter is sensitive to the placement and length of the stubs, the RF Module solved this model by also analyzing the change in filter characteristics as a function of mechanical deformation.

A Full List of the 20 New RF Module Tutorials

Computing the Radar Cross Section of a Perfectly Conducting Sphere

Microstrip Patch Antenna

Radome with Double-layered Dielectric Lens

Branch-Line Coupler

Evanescent Mode Cavity Filter

Biconical Antenna

Cascaded Rectangular Cavity Filter

Dielectric Resonator Antenna (DRA) with Parasitic Array

Antenna Decoupling Using Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) Metamaterial

Coupled Line Filter

Coplanar Waveguide (CPW) Bandpass Filter

Fabry-Perot Cavity

Dielectric Slab Waveguide

Finding the Impedance of a Coaxial Cable

Fresnel Equations

Transient Modeling of a Coaxial Cable

Optical Scattering off of a Gold Nanosphere

RF Module verification example: Q-factor and resonant frequency

Parallel Wire Transmission Line

180 Degree Ring Hybrid, Rat-Race, Coupler

About COMSOL

COMSOL Multiphysics is a software environment for the modeling and simulation of any physics-based system. A particular strength is its ability to account for multiphysics phenomena. Optional modules add discipline-specific tools for mechanical, fluid, electromagnetics, and chemical simulations, as well as CAD interoperability. Founded in 1986, the company has U.S. offices in Burlington, MA, Los Angeles, CA, and Palo Alto, CA. International operations have grown to include offices in the Benelux countries, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Independent distributors of COMSOL Multiphysics are located in Australia, China, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Spain, Taiwan, and Turkey. Additional information about the company is available at www.comsol.com.

###COMSOL and COMSOL Multiphysics are registered trademarks of COMSOL AB. Other product or brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.